Modern Vespa

That is really awesome. Congratulations on the recovery, and getting back to it!

Thanks! I'm so happy it went this way. I tried to remain positive about getting back on skis, but I wasn't always sure how well it would go. You just never know until the day comes to try it.

Thanks Jess for at least getting a map to sort of work. Sitting in New Plymouth after 465km and 7 hours in the saddle today. Best day's riding I have ever had.

It's been said that happiness is not a destination, but rather the result of a grateful heart. I fully believe that.

This morning this song popped up in my random music feed in my car.

Many years ago, working at the old shop, I was tasked with taking over work at our machining facility, twenty miles removed from my job at the casting facility. I was still expected to keep up with managing the work at casting. I went from programming two CMMs to six, spooling up for a slew of new machining work.

It's what ultimately drove me into scootering. To save gas.

Obviously I struggled. I eventually was able to convince management I needed help. We hired a guy named Brent. They literally had to pay him 20% more than they were paying me after 20 years of service to get him in the door (not his fault).

We didn't hit it off right away. Brent was very quiet and a little aloof. Eventually we found common ground in music and beer. I had open internet in the lab and set up a private network so we could stream Pandora and stuff.

It seemed that no matter what music we selected, Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You" would eventually show up. It became an inside joke.

We lost the contracts for the machining work after about two years. It was 40% of our work. They let Brent go, but we had really clicked by then and kept in touch.

A couple of years later he was diagnosed with ALS. He went from preparing for retirement to buying a wheelchair van. The last time he and his wife visited she had to feed him because his arms no longer worked.

Brent died in June of 2022. He left behind two great kids and a wife of 36 years.

Sometimes it takes a tragedy to readjust our sense of perspective. It shouldn't, but it does. I have my wife and family, my home, my job and more stuff than I need. I have my hands and feet and five senses. Whether you believe in God or destiny or the universe or just dumb luck, we should always use life's experiences to hone our perspectives and evaluate our own circumstances. I am grateful for everything I have, and grateful to have known Brent. Every single time I hear that stupid song I think of these things.





tl;dr - Quit whining. It's not all that bad.

Thanks for this.

I'll second that. Nicely written...it got to me...maybe dust in the air, maybe being a couple of months out from losing my mom and the inevitable adjustments to life slapping one upside the head. It seems to take that to make you sit down and assess your life and priorities. I know the cynics wail about the hidden blessing in so-called misfortunes, but it seems to me the best opportunities for growth....

Well written - thank you!

Today I have replaced my headlamp by a new one on my BV 300.

The headlamp was in bad condition and it seemed from the manual not too difficult to replace it myself.
So, I bought a genuine new one, it arrived yesterday, and today I did the replacement.

Took me an hour something but what an improvement it is.
Below a picture of the old lamp and the new one.
You can see in how bad condition the old lamp was with the reflector for the most part gone.

This is why I rarely post on the "What's Pissing You Off" thread. Do I get pissed off? Sure! But I'd rather share the good stuff.

when buying an item at the supermarket seeing the price for the item individually worked out less than buying in a 4 pack. Win

Significant threat of (admittedly low accumulation) snow and probably ice (as it will melt then get into the 20F vicinity overnight) saturday night into sunday, so we were able to convince the boss that this weekend's drill should be telework and that cheered up both myself AND my small black furry shadow.

That seems to be fairly common around here. It (literally) pays to check the pricing. I think the stores figure that shoppers just automatically assume that a volume purchase is always cheaper. Not so!

Also check the volume/weight price in different size containers. Sometimes the small container works out cheaper.

It's 32C so beer o'clock came early.

Crosslink: [NSR] What's Pissing you off Today? III (Post 2657500)

Spent 9 days in Costa Rica. Had a blast. Sunshine, beaches, ocean breezes, buffets full of fresh fruits and veggies... they all do the body good.

But sometimes what the heart needs is already at home. I got to come home to my 14+ year old doggo last night... we started looking into end of life options before leaving...

Costa Rica is beautiful. You should go.

But I'd rather listen to my old pup snoring than any ocean tonight. It's good to be home.

...that even though the 'Continental Breakfast' at the hotel this morning consisted of a dry, shitty, plain bagel of the cheapest kind, spackled with chunks of frozen butter (or something like butter),
'garnished' with dry, generic, peanut butter of some sort.....the smear of Smucker's strawberry jam (the good part) tried valiantly to rehab this stinker enough to be reasonably palatable, but alas, it wasn't to be, and half of this food-ish device was choked down, while half was deposited in, as our UK friends often say...'the bin'. A true culinary delight...by half.

On the bright side, the room was very nice, modern and refreshingly 'artsy', and believe it or not, even had surprisingly nice 'guy friendly' art prints on the wall...an extreme rarity in itself.

This is one of my big eye rolls with Amazon. Often the price is higher when buying the larger quantity. You have to do the math.

I'm stoked by positive feedback by members across the globe! I can do alot of things but not everything. Thanks MV!!

I want to see photos of the rigid frame chopper! That would cheer me up. 😃

Boom!

I built this one for long rides. I had a springer on it but built the forks for Baja.

Nice!
I like the old school fish scales paint.

I've ridden this one coast-to-coast and back. Something special about riding something you built from the ground up.

And a kick pan to boot! I got a 111 and a 6 speed Baker. We make a great team ripping across the US!

Kid (well, 21) had surgery last week. Recovering at home between semesters. Started a bleed yesterday, watching it per instructions, but worsening this evening so drove them back to the hospital, a good hour away. Kind of a harrowing drive with your kid next to you bleeding and the miles taking forever.

Anyway, it's 1 a.m., surgery went fine, bleeding stopped, and all fixed. Not the way to spend a Saturday night, but crisis is over, and we'll have our kid back alive....

I tried, I really did. Following in the firm of Señor Backlund, et. al, I posted in the "cheered up" side last night, er, this morning.. As it was after nidnight and we're expecting to get our progeny back at the hospital this morning,, we needed a hotel. The closest was a Hilton, seemed reasonable price-wise..... We arrive, front door locked and had to call the desk. Got let in, told the person at the desk rattling off options we'd take anything. She seemed to take her time getting us set up, but then seemed to really slow down. Apparently she was stuck getting us room keys. Eventually suggested we park our car and she'd have things sorted. We did. She didn't. Apparently it was a new system....

She did apologize weakly, but at nearly 2 a.m. I was more concerned about if I could sleep standing up. Finally, she said she still couldn't get keys, but she'd escort us to our room and have keys in the a.m.apparently needed to get our car back. Arriving at room, we enter, she heads down the hall when my wife notices the bare mattress. So, back to the front desk. I give up and grab a seat, wife joins me while the agent does battle with the computer for another 15 minutes. She did weirdly call over to us to ask our zip code.. Anyway, 30 minutes later we have a room...that gave us a good 3.5 hours of sleep.

Gonna be a long day today, but at least we'll be home.

I had to ferry a bus up to Deadwood from Rapid City this morning, only a 45 minute drive up I-90, and had the MIL hop on and do a ride-a-long. She's mid-80's, and couldn't quite negotiate the first step up into the bus, so I had to give her a helping shove to get her started in the right direction...up, but it worked out ok, and she managed to find an empty seat out of the fifty-six available. She can still get a bit of a thrill out of some pretty mundane things, and that's a good thing.

This! So pretty

So a few days ago we scored on Nextdoor a very nice-looking Kitchen Aid stove - similar models retail for upwards of $2000 and the rest. It turned out a couple of the burners didn't work. Never mind, even if we had to buy replacement elements they weren't *that* expensive. However, further investigation proved it was the 'infinite switch' burner controls that were faulty - and Kitchen Aid wanted $330 EACH for replacements. Bugger that!

A bit of dismantling and the controls come apart - I bet these control boards cost KA about 50 cents each. As it turned out, there are a couple of 240R resistors in series that get rather hot, and each duff control had one of each open circuit. Easy to replace (I had 220R or 270R, so chose 270R) across the duff ones, and hey presto the stove now works as it should! I think I worked out the cost of those resistors as about 1/5 of a cent each - so up yours Kitchen Aid!

I was heading for a nap when my partner asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Got up and we walked almost 3 miles around a local park. I spent much of the day in the kitchen. I made dough for pizza later in the week and an extra one for the freezer in the next week. Breakfast was nothing special: toast, bacon, eggs. Next was sausage cheese balls for quick breakfast or add-on to breakfast through the next week. Cut strawberries that I caught a deal on yesterday - they weren't in great shape, but I sliced up what was good and macerated them in sugar and fresh thyme. Dinner was a ham that I cooked in a broth with bay leaf, star anise, and cloves and glazed it in a honey glaze that turned the ham into a nice golden red color. Stir fried green beans with mushrooms, garlic, onion in a sauce with soy, oyster sauce, and sesame oil. Roasted potatoes with parsnips and carrots.

And while I love my time (thyme?) in the kitchen, and I clearly do, what makes me happiest is the reason I'm doing it: to support my partner as she takes on a new job as a professor in the college from which she graduated with her Master's degree. She's never taught a class before and this is only one class. She's excited, nervous, experiencing imposter syndrome, learning as she's teaching, busy busy busy (still has a full time job), but clearly enjoying and relishing the challenge. I'm immensely proud and honored to serve and support her in this endeavor.

I love it when things get repaired instead of heading for a landfill! Good show!

On the morning of December 18, I got two errors on my truck, one for Check Brake Light, the other for Check Turn Signal.

While still in the garage, I checked the lights, and both appeared to still be working. I called the dealership on my way to work to make a service appointment, since I figured it was electrical in nature, and thus beyond my skills to fix. The earliest available appointment was for Tuesday, January 30. I took the appointment.

When I got to work, I started researching the issue. When I bought the truck in 2021, I was under the impression that all of the lights were LEDs, with the exception of the reverse, license plate, and vanity lights. It turns out that the brake lights and rear turn signals are also not LEDs. I also learned that the brake and turn signals share two bulbs on each side. So one of my bulbs was burned out, but the other was still good, which is why it looked like they still worked but there was still an error.

I searched on the owner forum (yay forums!), and found one member who posted about having the same issue. I also found several posts about people who had upgraded their brake & turn signal bulbs to LEDs. I ordered two pairs of LEDs with CANBUS (to avoid the error of LEDs not drawing as much power as halogen bulbs) for $40 total. They arrived the Saturday before Christmas, and I installed them on the Tuesday after. I then called the dealer and canceled the service appointment.

The error went away, and the lights work great.

I got a nice new pair of boots at $30 to $40 less than if I had gotten them from the main (Red Wings) store. I'd been eyeing them for a while. Anyway, that's what is cheering me up today.

If there were a "Right to Repair" superhero, you can bet he'd have a big "JC" on the front of his unitard.

I wanna hear about the block of wood! What's it's story?

I'm going to have a guess at.. it goes under the stand foot when on soft ground (a squashed Coke can works great for a scooter, but I'd imagine a big old HD chopper needs something a bit more substantial)?

It serves two purposes. 1) it keeps the bag on the back away from the hot exhaust pipe (they will catch fire). 2) its sized so it can be wedged under the frame to raise the rear wheel off the ground just high enough to fix a flat on the side of the road.

Re: #2 - When I saw it looked closer to a 2x6 than a 2x4 I figured as much. Good stuff as usual 👍

It actually a piece of 3/4" plywood cut to roughly 8" x 24".

I agree!

I actually have a 1960's vintage SunBeam MixMaster that developed a problem since last time I used it just be for turkey day. It only runs wide-open even at the lowest speed. This is a somewhat common problem caused most of the time by a failed capacitor. So I went on line and found a guy selling replacements for about $15 shipped.

Only problem is it did not cure the speed problem. Now what to do?

Well I just happen to have an identical mixer on the shelf and that one controls just fine. So plan is to disassemble the working one and use parts from it to test the non-working one to figure out which part is causing the problem.

I plan on doing this tomorrow as "she who must be obeyed" will be gone most of the day. Because I know full well if I mentioned one was not working right she would be saying toss it and just use the new Cuisinart machine she bought. Like I would want to do that! Besides she is fussier about that machine than a Big Twin Harley guy is about their ride!

PS nothing against caschnd1, I can tell he is not what I see around here as the "typical Harley guy". Most of them hit their limit of knowledge knowing where to put the gas in the tank!

About 98.8% of the Vespas where i live are 150cc.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/e1ESUg8dEeFAutLY9

In the big city yesterday I saw a 300, From the rear it looked decidedly middle-aged